Exold - quote

#1357: Every child is a deliberate...

David — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:14:52 GMT

Every child is a deliberate, passionate creation of God. If you doubt that, just look into their eyes. You will find a gentle little spirit who hungers for life — and for your love.

— Gary Holland

#1356: "Walking Around" (Pablo Neruda)

David — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:11:11 GMT

Walking Around

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of womb and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wood.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don’t want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don’t want so much misery.
I don’t want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That’s why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulfur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels, and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

-– Pablo Neruda

#1355: Better to toil blindly...

David — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:07:55 GMT

Better to toil blindly, beating every stone in turn for grains of gold, whether they contain any or not, than lie down in apathetic decay.

— John Muir

#1354: When I face the desolate impossibility...

David — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:03:28 GMT

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day’s work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of never finishing.

— John Steinbeck, Travels with Charlie

#1353: We lift ourselves...

David — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:00:03 GMT

We lift ourselves by our thought. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always everywhere.

— Orison Swett Marden